Flag eti­quette

I was in­ter­ested in your ex­cel­lent piece in the Sum­mer 2018 edi­tion on flag eti­quette. It al­ways sur­prises me how lit­tle the av­er­age yachts­man knows about this. The ar­ti­cle, how­ever, in­cludes a sweep­ing state­ment that all blue en­signs be­long to royal yacht clubs. I have to point out we at the Lit­tle Ship Club also have a blue de­faced en­sign. We are very proud of the fact we were given this en­sign by the Ad­mi­ralty in 1938 for the train­ing we pro­vided to the Royal Naval Vol­un­teer (Sup­ple­men­tary) re­serve in the run-up to the Sec­ond World War, the only oc­ca­sion when a priv­i­lege en­sign was gifted. The Lit­tle Ship Club con­tin­ues to pro­vide train­ing to mem­bers and non- mem­bers alike, now us­ing the RYA’S na­tional scheme which we were in­stru­men­tal in help­ing to set up back in the 1970s. Peter New­bury, past com­modore, Lit­tle Ship Club